First_Things

Recommended Reading:

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Mark R Levin Go to Books > Obama Era > Pg 1

Threshold Editions 256 Pgs $25.00

Serious Considerations:

03/18/09 If you have not already heard the name, remember Orly Taitz. You may get to know her well; many soldiers already do. JES

03/17/09 On the AIG bonuses for their executives. It appears that the award of these bonuses was legal under existing contracts. The outrage in Congress should be directed at its own members who wrote the legislation authorizing the funding without restrictions, now considered important after the fact. The outrage within AIG as to others complaints concerning the payments of the bonuses perhaps should be directed at a self examination of their own judgment of the matter. While contracts had to be honored, was a legally minimalist award considered? That the numbers were originally worked before the bailout is irrelevant; the checks were cut afterwards. If your house is on fire, it is wise to shut off the gas.

Taking taxpayer money to fund bonuses is a bit like biting the hand now feeding you. While the real AIG error was to accept the government money in the first place, having done so, it was naive on the part of AIG not to recognize that they had a new boss: the taxpayers and the Government. Taxpayers, and governments, are fickle with respect to what they will or will not accept, tending to be blind to the fact that governments make themselves legally immune from the charge of confiscatory practices in partnership with taxpayers anxious for their own paybacks.

So whose ox is to be gored? There is no substitute for private sector bankruptcy or for public sector shame and disbarment. Contracts aside, it is difficult to explain to a tax paying public how private sector executives of a drowning enterprise should be in receipt of any bonuses at taxpayer expense. However, the actual criminals are to be found in Congress, now running for the tall grass. The consequences of the now decades old slippery slope of political intervention into free markets are now fully manifest. And who is it who is responsible for voting, and continuing to vote for these folks? Surely the United States does have a representative democracy, the republic long since disappeared. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. Go look in the mirror, and either relax your own grip on the honey pot, or shut up. The Sky boss is watching all of this. JES

03/15/09 This past week the markets showed some weak improvement with the Dow hanging its nose over the 7000 level. Do not be fooled by premature claims of a turnaround from the peanut gallery. A glance at the performance of the Dow over the last 6 months will put the matter in better perspective. Nor should one only be looking at the Dow; there are dozens of other yardsticks out there. First quarter profit reports need close watching, and the issue of all the toxic debt held by banks remains unresolved, including credit cards. Then, of course, there is the burden of the government “stimulus” package yet to be understood in the fine print. JES

03/09/09 The Obama circus continues. Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dumps another 79.89 points. Can the 6000 level be far away? 5000 anyone? And Liberals propose that they are the smartest people in the world. Have any of them ever considered just getting the government the hell out of the way. No, because government is their religion. Literally. JES

03/09/09 I would be cautious about anything Warren Buffett has to say about the current national and international economic bust up. He has “a dog in the fight”; protecting his own personal investments. He has every right in the world to do that, however what may be good for Warren Buffett may not be good for the nation’s economic future. Furthermore, I don’t believe the man is above using his very popular public platform to state positions that are intended to redound to his own long term personal interests. A few years ago he made a lot of news coming out against elimination of the so-called “death tax”. What was really going on was that Warren Buffett was making millions by bottom feeding off of people’s estates crippled by post death estate tax assessments. Break them with taxes and bottom feed off the remains. For me that sums it up about Warren Buffett. Neither is his habitual pussy-footing with Democrats suggested to me a man of honor. Actually sort of skuzzy for a man of wealth. I would urge caution about his “advice”. JES

03/07/09 The same political forces that thrust Obama into power are his greatest weakness and vulnerability. You see even his closest supporters fear to confront him on matters of reality as he dawdles in fantasies of himself as a messiah, confusing campaign style rhetoric with dreamt policy solutions. With this fear to confront Hamlet with reality we find the final manifestation of White Liberal (mostly of the limousine variety) Guilt over the slavery of blacks. So it is that, steeped in the ideologies of victimhood, many blacks, along with their White Liberal (mostly of the limousine variety) enablers (masta’s?) find themselves in a fit of unleashed anti-American rage, and actually propose to tear the country down. Behind it all is the same feckless White Liberal (mostly of the limousine variety) Guilt that fed the monster in the first place. As for Obama, stay around for the modern final act of Hamlet. JES

03/07/09 Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”. California, among others, take note. Yes, indeed, as perhaps the entire world will come to discover. JES

03/06/09 Obama, you can only play the “It’s all George W. Bush’s fault” card for so long. The Dow is off 20% since Inauguration Day; worst in over 90 years for a new president. In fact, follow the decline of the Dow since Election Day. The market looks forward, not backwards.
JES

03/05/09 Obama has designated Charles Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. This is totally irresponsible and an act of sabotage against American national security interests. The man is awash, financially, with Saudi Arabian and Chinese interests, and that is only the beginning. JES

03/04/09 I have followed Rush Limbaugh since 1991. At the margin, we have had our differences. Today I can say without equivocation that this past week Rush has been at his absolute best. Finally 100%. Rush, pour it on. No more Mr. nice guy. Pound them Rush; pound,pound, pound. Carpet bomb them without mercy. Take no prisoners. We are in a war for the survival of this country. Thank you for your service to this country. Keep it up; we can win. JES, the Mountain Observer.

03/04/09 Baraka Hussein Obama, the messiah, President of the world and international ward healer, no doubt in consultation with Hillary Rodham Rodham,, is off to a bad if predictable start on the foreign policy front. As this team proceeds to cut the legs out from under Israel, preferring to further coddle Hamas, they proceed also to back down before the Russians over the issue of missile defense against Iran in Poland and the Czech Republic. At least until January 20^th, 2009, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic considered America to be their friends. (There was a second, if unspoken, purpose to the deployments in Eastern Europe). Obama now chooses to throw them all under the bus. In Eastern Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin is wringing his hands at the possibilities. Meanwhile, what both these situations have in common are the mullahs in Iran, and their long term objective of defeating the West. With Obama’s help, they may well ultimately succeed. JES

02/27/09 The New York Jewish community may finally be figuring out that, with respect to Israel, Hillary Rodham Rodham may not be their friend after all. "I am very surprised, frankly, at this statement (Hillary complaining about Israel’s policies toward Gaza and Hamas) from the United States government and from the secretary of state," said Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and member of the NYC Jewish Community Relations Council. Well, my good friend Zucky, you really have no cause to be surprised at all. Hillary Rodham Rodham is being exactly who she is and always has been: (I shall be kind) a Leftist out of the mold of Saul Alinski. With the Obama government, all of you back in New York have got exactly what you voted for. Your disgraceful contempt for the real America you have never known is about to bite you square in the ass. God Bless Benjamin Netanyahu, a real Israeli on the cusp of redeeming Israel, not only from the threats of Persia, but also, perhaps, from the upper west side. JES

02/26/09 Something for the GOP, and Conservatives, to think about. Go to. JES

02/23/09 Lately there has been much talk about the question of bank nationalization as somehow a final solution, so to speak, of the credit crisis that is slowly strangling the economy. Exactly what nationalization would accomplish, and how, seems never to be spelled out by the advocates. There seems to be an unspoken premise that outright government ownership and control would serve as an automatic precursor to renewed stability and "responsibility". It seems not to have occurred to the government authors of the original problem that there is a relationship between the continuing slide of the markets and any proposal that expanded government intervention will solve anything.

Now the simple fact of the matter is that there is a bear hiding under the rug in the form of huge amounts of toxic loans held by many banks, and the real question is what to do with them. In the old days the solution to this problem was called bankruptcy. It does matter how these conditions came to pass as they have, so as to prescribe resolution. In summary, over the last 30 years the banking system has slowly been circled by a vast web of Congressional initiatives to impose, politically, a series of social yardsticks and restrictions on secular free market bank lending practices. The house of cards has come tumbling down and the real purps are unwilling to take ownership of the problem.

The remedy of nationalization, even "briefly", pending "normalization" of specific institutions sounds good in theory. However, I remember a somewhat analogous situation back in the seventies when the railroad industry, finally freed of a host of onerous regulation, wanted, and needed, to ditch the passenger train business. The political types would have nothing to do with that, so the compromise that evolved was the creation of Amtrak, a socialist experiment that was to be short lived consequent to a huge investment by the taxpayers anticipating a spinoff of a publically healed system back to the market. Amtrak is still with us, continuing to consume vast gobs of taxpayer money provided by folks who never get on a train. Could something similar happen with nationalized banks?

As the Mountain Observer sees it, however, there are at least two fundamental problems, currently, with the idea of nationalized banks.

1). Nationalization (taxpayers again assuming the liability) is an act of organization that does not specifically address the real issue of what to do with the toxic debt. So the real problem remains unsolved as the credibility of the system continues to unwind.

2). There is not the slightest bit of evidence as to the competency of any government overseer to manage a bank., and, indeed, the opposite is true.

In a true and just world, a free market would sort out winners and losers, and certain Congressmen, and ex-heads of the Federal Reserve, would go straight to jail. Of course, this will not happen, so prepare yourself for a long hard slug ahead. Perhaps Americans again will learn the rules of personal independence and responsibility, the potential upside of this whole sorry mess. JES

02/21/09 White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli knew exactly what he was talking about on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade with his observations concerning the Democrat government stimulus plan. Demand side economics are toxic. Only supply side economics will work. Robert Gibbs, with your boss, you are a buffoon, and do not know it. Or perhaps, at least, your boss does know exactly the havoc he is inflicting and is doing so deliberately. One of many questions before us. JES

02/20/09 Israeli President Shimon Peres made the only sensible decision he could possibly make in asking Benjamin Netanyahu to form the next Israeli government as Prime Minister. Sadly, Tzipi Livni, of the centrist Kadima party, seems momentarily to have gone off in a bit of a pout over the matter, further suggesting the wisdom of the Peres decision. What Ms. Livni seems to not understand is that her presence in a national coalition, desired by
both Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrel Beitenu party, would be for the greater good of Israel during events likely soon to unfold. We pray that she will give this some thought. The Peres decision, I believe, was based not only on the objective reality that jointly, the Right in Israeli politics (Likud, Yisrel Beitenu and the orthodox parties) won a clear majority, but that also the immediate issue was to address the existential threat of Iran and its proxies. The Palestinians will need to await another day in addition to purging themselves of a hatred that can go nowhere. The burden of peace is on them, not Israel, an Israel that has demonstrated patience at this point beyond reason. Meanwhile, it seems that Baraka Hussein Obama is at a total loss to understand any of this, or perhaps he does, and actually has a darker agenda. Rough days ahead for both Israel and the United (sort of) States. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, carry on. JES

02/19/09 Attorney General Eric Holder, I am no coward. Your comments reveal yourself as the national standard of Black Racism, and a scab on the butt of our society. You are a tiny and pathetic little mouse and should be ashamed of yourself. JES